1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to collimation adjustment of a light beam generated by a laser system, as well as a collimation lens group and flexure cell used in laser systems for such collimation adjustment.
2. Related Art
External cavity diode laser systems may require that the light beam generated by the laser diode be collimated. The light beam generated by the laser diode may be collimated using one or more optical components. Depending on the optical design requirements of the laser system, adjustment of the collimation lenses may be very demanding (e.g., providing required degrees of freedom for adjustment). Further, these adjustments are often be made with a very fine resolution on the order of about 1 micrometer resolution. For example, in many laser systems, centering these lenses and adjusting the axial spacing between the lenses may be highly sensitive and very small alignment errors may result in significant degradation of the quality of the generated laser beam. Additionally, in many laser systems the lenses may be very small (e.g., approximately 6 mm in height) further complicating the task of aligning the lenses. As such, there is a need for improved systems for adjusting the alignment of the lenses in a collimation group for laser systems.